Time Present and Time Past is a 2013 novel by Irish writer Dierdre Madden, winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and shortlisted for the Orange Prize. This reminded me of novels I enjoyed by Helen Dunmore, Penelope Fitzgerald, and Susan Hill. Reviewers found this a little masterpiece, beguiling, and ruminative. I found this well written, but simple and without a central event that held me.
We follow middle-aged Fintan Buckley through his daily life at work and at home with his family; Collette, his average wife who is rather timid; Rob his eldest son who is outgoing; a middle son Niall who is a political vegetarian; and Lucy the youngest daughter. Fintan and Collette have a loving relationship with his sister Marina, a fashionable boutique owner, and less so with his critical mother Joan. Fintan's storyline involves discovering old photographs with his son, and researching various early film developing processes. This leads him to musings about the passage of time, and how still images offer a visual portal into the past. Marina lives with her beloved Aunt Beth after an experience she is reluctant to discuss made her suddenly return home from London. Through viewing old photograph the siblings recall their childhood holidays on a farm near Dublin, and return to revisit family there.
There is no building crisis, or denouement resolution that drew me in. This is a novel about a family, where each character gets a featured role, time passes, simple daily life is examined. Well written but I wonder what the author's driving force would be; perhaps it is a personal story.
I wondered why I started it - and - I wondered why I finished it.
Not bad, but not for me.
2013 / Tradeback / 227 pages
Political vegetarian?????????
I want to read the novel just for the title which is very evocative.
Neeru